Tuesdays at the Castle

by Jessica Day George

  “I’ll eat in a moment,” Lilah said absently.

  “You’d best eat now,” Ma’am Housekeeper said. She scooped up the wax tablet. “It looks well enough, Your Highness. I’ll review it one last time, and show Master Denning.” Master Denning was the head butler. “We’ll make any changes we think necessary, but I don’t think there will be any.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Quite sure, Your Highness,” the housekeeper said in her kind voice.

  She marched out, shooing the kitchen maids in front of her, and Lilah sat down with a sigh.

  Lilah lifted the lid of her tray, wrinkled her nose, and put the lid back. Celie raised her eyebrows: lunch was an excellent cheese and cauliflower soup, with bacon and tomato sandwiches to dip in it, and bunches of enormous grapes. Lilah loved cheese and cauliflower soup and grapes.

  “You need to eat,” Celie said sternly, taking a big bite of her own sandwich to encourage her sister.

  “Yes, you do,” Pogue agreed, coming into the room with Rolf.

  They sat down, took the lids off their trays, and began to eat without any further greeting. Pogue seemed to be magically able to put half a sandwich into his mouth at once, without looking greedy or having anything fall out, and managed to wink at Celie at the same time. Rolf tore his sandwich into quarters, and proceeded to dunk each quarter in soup and then throw it into his mouth as though he were starving.

  “We’ve been up since dawn,” Rolf said, looking apologetic, when he’d finished his sandwich and picked up his spoon.

  “Well, so have I!” Lilah’s voice was shrill. “I’ve been running the entire Castle, you know! Getting ready for the ceremony, making sure all the guests have a place to sleep and enough food, and it just goes on and on, without anyone to help me!”

  Celie would have pointed out that she had been helping, was in fact the one who had found out if there was enough food, but decided that it wasn’t worth the argument.

  “What about Celie?” Pogue smiled at Celie. “I’m sure she’s helping.”

  Celie glowed and smiled back, but Lilah’s dark expression smothered the smile.

  “So it’s just the two of us? Celie and I are expected to do everything?” Lilah was almost in tears.

  “Lilah!” Rolf put down his spoon. “Stop that at once! You know that Pogue and I have been busy! He’s been talking to the captain of the guards …” Rolf looked askance at Celie. “You know, just in case there’s any unpleasantness.”

  “You mean, if the Grathians try to take over?” Celie raised her eyebrows and tried to look grown-up.

  “Er. Yes,” Rolf admitted. “And Pogue’s been directing the Castle guards’ move from the large barracks to other quarters to accommodate the guests’ men-at-arms. And added to that, he’s also kept a watch on the roads to see who’s arriving.”

  “And what have you been doing?” Lilah did not look at all mollified.

  “I have been trying to keep our family in possession of this Castle,” Rolf said quietly. “As much as anyone can be in possession of Castle Glower.”

  Celie stopped eating. They all stared at Rolf, except for Pogue, who looked uncomfortable. He put down his spoon, too, as Lilah pushed her tray away.

  “Oh, Rolf … you don’t really think? But your room is still near the throne room! Isn’t it?” Lilah’s voice faltered. “Doesn’t the Castle still want you to be king?”

  “I assume so,” Rolf said. “My room is still as it always was. But that doesn’t mean anything to Vhervhine. Or Grath. It barely means anything to Father’s own Council!”

  “The Council?” Lilah’s brow clouded. “But they support you … they have to, or they’ll end up trapped in their own rooms or spit out a chimney, and they know it!”

  “Lilah,” Pogue said softly. “Rolf’s room hasn’t changed. At all.”

  “I know that, Pogue,” Lilah snapped. “Rolf just said … Oh!”

  “What? What is it?” Celie looked anxiously around.

  “My room hasn’t changed, Cel,” Rolf repeated. “It’s not any bigger. It doesn’t have any royal seal on the wall, like Father and Mother’s room does. There’s no padded stand for the crown, or room in the wardrobe for any robes of state. I’m still just the crown prince.”

  Lilah looked at Rolf and spoke slowly, as though not sure what to say. “You’re still the crown prince. That means that the Castle hasn’t chosen anyone else to be king, right?”

  A burst of hope was fluttering in Celie’s rib cage like a little bird. “I know what it means!” She bounced in her seat in excitement. “I know what it means!”

  “What does it mean, Celie?” Rolf turned to her, looking relieved that she might have an answer, since he apparently did not.

  “It means that Father isn’t dead!” Celie blurted out.

  “What? No, Celie!” Lilah reached across the table and took her hand gently. “Dearest, you heard what Avery said, and what the search party found—”

  “But if Father were dead, then Rolf would be the new king,” Celie argued. “And since Rolf is still the crown prince, then Father must still be alive!”

  “What if the Castle has chosen someone else?” Pogue asked suddenly. “Well … there’s always that chance, isn’t there?” He ducked his head. “Sorry, Rolf,” he muttered.

  Celie gave him a withering look. “But then Rolf wouldn’t be the crown prince,” Celie pointed out. “His room would have moved, or been made smaller, or something.”

  “Mother and Father’s room is the same … isn’t it?” Lilah stood up.

  “I haven’t looked,” Rolf said slowly. He got up, too.

  Now they were all on their feet, and Celie’s heart was fluttering worse than before. She couldn’t believe that she hadn’t checked in her parents’ room before. But the Castle had been in mourning … hadn’t it? It had draped itself in black, had refrained from making any big changes. But was that only because they were sad and scared? Did it understand death? Could it really sense what had happened to her parents, leagues away?

  Pogue asked the same questions as they hurried along the corridors.

  “It’s a castle … I mean, how much could it really understand?”

  “Don’t talk like that,” Celie warned. “It might throw you out!”

  “Good question, though,” Rolf said as they reached their parents’ chambers. “No one really knows. But whether or not our parents are truly dead, the Castle is upset, and it’s getting ready for something. Don’t you think, Celie?”

  Celie just nodded, a little out of breath from keeping up with their longer legs. The Castle was getting ready for something: the memorial service, a coronation, she wasn’t sure. There was a kind of hum to the stones, a sense of awareness that hadn’t been there before. Or not quite, anyway.

  “Moment of truth,” Rolf said, putting one hand on the latch of their parents’ bedchamber.

  “Please hurry, Rolf,” Lilah said. “Before one of the servants sees and thinks we’ve run mad with grief.”

  Rolf opened the door, and they all pushed inside. He closed it swiftly behind them, and they looked around in the dimness. The fire and candles had not been lit, and the curtains were drawn. Celie tried to cross the room to open them, and barked her shin on a low stool.

  “Ouch!”

  “I’ll do it,” Lilah said, and gracefully made her way to the windows without bumping into anything, and pulled the heavy curtains wide.

  Celie gazed around with her brother and sister and their friend. There was the bearskin rug before the hearth. There on the mantel were the ivory miniatures of all four of the royal children. The purple coverlet. Their mother’s embroidery frame with a half-finished design stretched across it. The carved pedestal with the scarlet cushion on top, bearing the crown of state. Their father had taken a smaller circlet to wear at Bran’s advancement to wizard.

  “It’s just the same,” Celie whispered, and felt tears pour down her cheeks.

  “Oh, what shall we do?” Lila
h said, wringing her hands.

  “What do you mean? This is glorious news!” Rolf’s eyes were shining, and he put an arm around Celie and gave her a tight squeeze.

  “We have two hundred guests arriving today for a funeral,” Lilah reminded her brother. “What are we to do with them? Send them home? Because the Castle thinks Mother and Father are still alive?”

  “Lilah!” Celie shrugged off her brother’s arm, angry. “Don’t you believe that they’re alive?”

  “I—I would like to,” Lilah said, her large eyes wet with unshed tears. “But there’s also Avery’s report!” She held out her right hand, showing them their mother’s wedding ring on her middle finger. “And I have to be the practical one. If they’re not—”

  Celie rushed to Lilah and embraced her, and Rolf followed, wrapping his arms around both sisters. Pogue stood with his hands in his pockets, gazing out the window, and then finally spoke after a few minutes.

  “Here’s what we’ll do,” he said. “We’ll have the ceremony; it’s all been planned. The guests are arriving, and they’re expecting it, and we need to honor those who we know for certain died in the ambush. Then, after the ceremony, I’ll take some men up to the pass and look around myself. Quietly. I know the land pretty well, and most of the shepherds and farmers know me; they might talk to me when they wouldn’t to a soldier.”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” Rolf said, dropping his arms and taking up a thoughtful pose by the fireplace. “What if you went through the pass and beyond?”

  “Where?” Pogue and Lilah asked at the same time.

  Pogue winked at her, and Lilah flushed.

  “To the College of Wizardry,” Rolf said excitedly. “I can’t believe we didn’t think of this before! There must be something they can do, to verify who died, or search for any survivors with magic!”

  “They must know how to track Bran,” Celie said, clutching at the neck of her gown to try to contain her racing heart. “He was there for three years! Perhaps they could look for him in a—a crystal ball or something!”

  “Pogue, would you?” Lilah reached out a beseeching hand to him.

  He took it and kissed it, his old flirtatious ways surfacing. “For you, anything!”

  Celie and Rolf rolled their eyes, but they were grinning broadly.

  Chapter

  8

  The memorial service had taken place more than a week ago, but many of the guests still lingered at the Castle. Celie couldn’t find a single corner of the Castle that didn’t have some Vhervhish servant or Grathian courtier in it. They were everywhere, waving scented handkerchiefs (the Grathians) or glaring and fingering their belt knives (the Vhervhish). Plus there were the people of Sleyne, who were taking an avid interest in the “poor royal orphans.” Women from the village and from every farm for leagues around kept flinging themselves at Celie, pinching her cheeks and asking if she was eating enough. Celie was trying to distract herself from the uncertainty of her parents’ fate by working on her atlas of the Castle; having her cheeks pinched by a plump farmwife or her nose tickled by a wafting kerchief was not helping at all.

  Celie had convinced herself that making an atlas of the Castle would make everything all right. She envisioned finishing the final map, tidying it all up, and putting it into a leather cover. And then, just as she was tying the thong to hold the cover closed, there would be the sound of horses in the courtyard, and voices raised in excitement, and Daddy and Mummy and Bran would be there, tired but whole, dismounting from their horses. And she would hug them tightly, and then present her father with the atlas, and tell him that she had always known they would be all right, so she’d been busy working on the atlas while they were gone. And her father would praise her skill and admire the atlas, and then they would all go in to a celebratory feast.

  She tried to keep this scenario firmly in her mind, but sometimes doubts crept in. Images of a grim line of wizards entering the courtyard, escorted by Pogue, to shake their heads and say that they were certain the king and queen were dead. If her thoughts turned to this ugliness, her fingers would go numb, and she would sit paralyzed for hours, staring at nothing. Sometimes when she shook off the bleak pictures in her head, she found that her cheeks were wet and her bodice soaked, but couldn’t remember when she had started crying or how long it had been.

  She’d started hiding under the throne again, even though Rolf never sat on it anymore. In fact, the throne room was hardly used at all, making it perfect for her to use. She would sneak into the room after breakfast and sit on the floor behind the throne. If anyone did come in, she would grab her things and slide backward into the space beneath the seat, like a turtle going into its shell.

  She was drawing what she remembered of the south wing, the one where the Grathian guests were staying, when someone opened the throne room door. Celie snatched up her charcoal pencils and parchment and slithered under the throne with a sigh of annoyance. It wasn’t that what she was doing was wrong; it’s just that no one seemed to want her to have the time to do it.

  She was about to poke her head out and scowl at whoever it was when someone spoke. Celie had been expecting Rolf’s voice, or perhaps Lilah’s, or maybe one of her father’s Councilors. But she didn’t recognize the voice at all.

  And he was speaking Vhervhish.

  She wiggled around until she could peep out of the latticework at the front of the throne and see who it was. There were two men: the Vhervhish ambassador and the prince, Khelsh. Khelsh was the one speaking, snarling his words and clutching at his wide belt like he might strangle the ambassador if he let go of it. The ambassador cowered before the prince’s wrath, and no wonder: Prince Khelsh was built like an ox and could have picked the ambassador up with one hand if he’d wanted to.

  The ambassador’s reply came out in a whine. He was wringing his hands and gesturing around the throne room. He clearly wasn’t happy with what he had to tell the prince, and the prince wasn’t happy with what he was hearing, either. Celie heard them use the same words over and over, and she wrote them down as best she could. It occurred to her that she could look them up later in the Vhervhish phrase book in the Spyglass Tower and perhaps get an inkling about why Khelsh was so upset. The veins in his neck bulged alarmingly, and he was starting to swell like a bullfrog. Celie half expected the high collar of his thick Vhervhish tunic to pop open with the force of the prince’s displeasure.

  As soon as Khelsh and his ambassador left, Celie crawled out from under the throne and hurried down the servants’ passage. She came out in the main corridor, and right there in front of her was the staircase that led to the Spyglass Tower. She looked around to make sure that no one saw her before she hurried up the stairs. It was the one other place where she could find privacy, but she always hesitated to go up there. It was cold, with the four enormous windows, and no rugs or tapestries to warm the stone floor or walls, and there was something … strange about it. There was an expectant feeling, like the Castle had put the room there for a reason, but the reason wasn’t yet known.

  Celie closed the big wooden door behind her, although she doubted anyone could have followed her. Even Rolf and Lilah could never find the stairway unless Celie was with them. She went over to the big table and picked up the Vhervhish phrase book. There was a list of words at the back, and she scanned through it to find the ones she had heard. She’d spelled them all wrong, but by saying them aloud she managed to find three of the words.

  Castle—not surprising.

  Heir, or crown prince—again, not all that surprising. Of course they would be talking about Rolf.

  Kill.

  That was not a good word. In fact, Vhervhish was a very warlike language, and the Vhervhish people had a number of different words for violent acts. According to the book, this particular word meant to kill in secret, or “an assassination.”

  Were the Vhervhish planning to assassinate Rolf?

  Celie ran down the stairs, then whirled around and went back up. She gathere
d the book and her atlas, both for proof and in case she needed some of the other maps. Lilah had said she was going to check in the storerooms with Ma’am Housekeeper, to make certain they had enough food and candles to keep up with the continuing guests. Rolf had gone to the village to talk to the local artisans about erecting a memorial for those who had died in the ambush. Pogue’s father, Dammen Parry, would be there. Like Prince Khelsh, Master Parry was the size of an ox, but unlike Khelsh, Master Parry was extremely fond of Rolf. There was no way Rolf would come to harm with the blacksmith at his side.

  Whipping around a sharp turn just before the winding stair to the storerooms, Celie smacked into someone. Her atlas and the book went flying, and so did a very small dog.

  “Oof! Sorry!” Celie scrambled to pick up her things, while not one but three little dogs went yapping around her ankles. “Stop that!” She snapped her fingers at one of them when it tried to chew on her atlas.

  “I am that much sorry, Princess Cecelia,” said the person she’d smacked into.

  She looked up, and up and up, into the face of Prince Lulath. He was very tall, but so thin he looked like one of the reeds down by the river, the kind that bent all the way to the ground when the wind blew. He was wearing a yellow tunic with sleeves that nearly brushed the ground, and his hair was almost as long as hers.

  “It’s all right,” she mumbled.

  She had a flash of fear that maybe he wanted to assassinate Rolf, too. She hid the Vhervhish book and the atlas behind her back, and started to sidle past him.

  “And you are going to have so much fun today?”

  “Er, I suppose,” she said, taken aback. How much fun was she supposed to have, when her parents and brother were presumed dead?

  “The Castle, it makes many fun things for you?” Lulath took a step to follow her as she slithered down the corridor, scooping to pick up the dogs without looking down. He was smiling broadly, his blue eyes fixed on her face.